Volk, Tyler

Amelia Amon

Tyler Volk is Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies
at New York University. His research involves the global carbon cycle, world
energy, the role of life and evolution in the biosphere, and general systems
studies. His newest book is Quarks to Culture: How We Came to Be, featured
in his recent Rorotoko interview. Recipient of the NYU All-University
Distinguished Teaching Award, Volk lectures and travels widely, communicates
his ideas in a variety of media, plays lead guitar for the science-inspired
rock band The Amygdaloids, and is an avid outdoorsman. Volk’s previous books
include CO2 Rising: The World’s Greatest Environmental Challenge,
featured in his earlier Rorotoko interview; Metapatterns Across Space, Time,
and Mind; and Gaia’s Body: Toward a Physiology of Earth. As to an
overarching theme across all these books, he might say, “systems and their
mysterious ways, deeply relevant for human life.”

Spontaneous generation is one of those wrong theories that clutter the basements of the biological sciences and that now look so very obviously wrong that it is hard to see how anyone could have taken them seriously in the first place. Why wouldn’t it occur to anyone that flies might be laying eggs that were too small for us to see? How simple would the crucial experiment be? What I have tried to do in much of my work is to turn this ‘obvious wrongness’ on its head—why, exactly, does it seem so obviously wrong?—and see what the new picture that emerges from that inquiry says about science and our belief in its results.Daryn Lehoux, Interview of November 13, 2017

It’s commonplace to say that humor is subjective, since what’s funny to you might not be funny to me. But humor is also a loaded concept. If you – or your people – have no sense of humor, or the wrong one, that means you’re less rational, tolerant, understanding, or civilized. You don’t get it. Or, worse, you lack something human. Modern Chinese debates about humor were very much caught up with these fundamental questions of value.Christopher Rea, Interview of October 26, 2016